What's Happening in West Virginia?

Anytime during the day on Wednesday, February 6th, you can post one (or more!) Tweets to the hashtag #wvlm_smackdown to share your resources, ideas or tools! To participate, just post your idea and include (#wvlm_smackdown) in the text. It will then appear whenever anyone does a search in Twitter for #wvlm_smackdown! Since Twitter limits your characters in your post, you may need to shorten your URL to the site you’re sharing. (tinyurl.com, bit.ly or goo.gl are three free services to shorten your URLs!) See my sample above:

Don’t have a Twitter account? No problem? You can also post your ideas to the Thinkfinity WV LMS Community!

"Rhythm of You" a music video written, recorded, and filmed by two talented young ladies from Liberty High School.

The lyrics and music were written by Emily C. Allen. Breanna Todd sang back up vocals. The music was recorded on a school laptop with Cool Edit Pro. It was edited in Adobe Soundbooth. The video was shot using our new JVC hm150u HD camera. The video was edited using Adobe Premiere. Emily And Breanna did the digital recording and Joshua Smith did the lights and digital camera work for the video.

Students at Kanawha Elementary in Wood County

I'm at East Fairmont Junionr High School in Marion County. I will be using the link to our monthly magazine for math. The lesson is called On A Roll and uses bar graphs to compare Roller man to the other superfast athletes from around the world. The link is www.scholastic.com/math . The kids really like getting the digital treatment that goes with the magazine. Some groups are large and we will work in teams. Others can view and work individually

Let me introduce myself: my name is Violeta Gruia, I am a Math teacher at Greenbrier West High School and I simply love using technology in my classroom. I have some pictures with my students while they use either their net book with Math online practice, the Smart Board with applets, or the responders. I need to make sure first that all students in the pictures agree with me sending these pictures. We experience snow days right now, but first day we return to school I will send my pictures to you.
I also have some preferred ways to teach Math using technology: we use different applications from SAS, Acuity, Smart board Exchange and any other interactive web sites I find on www. Sometimes we use the responders (mostly verbal) and at the end of each unit my students practice/review on carefully chosen assignments from www.thatquiz.com. I direct them using the guest access: vgruia on my www.portaportal.com. They just need to access their class, to choose their name from the class list and use a password. Each assignment has guided and step by step applications of what they have learned as well as an immediate feedback (wrong / right answer) with a score and detailed explanations in the end. I receive their score automatically, I may reset some grades (my students ask me to if they are failing or not good enough scores) and I average these scores into a classwork grade for each unit of instruction. Let me know if there is something you want me to share more about.
Thank you,
Violeta Gruia

We also have this short documentary based on the My Hero Project. The original music was composed and recorded by Frank Treadway. We include a QR code at the end as an experiment with digital portfolios. - E. Jeremy Rodriguez, Liberty High School

Sarah Cooper of Elkins High School made this for her Senior Project presentation.

Congratulations to the staff and students at Madison Middle School in Boone County. The school’s entry in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition was selected as one of the top 15 national finalists. As a finalist, the school will receive $40,000.00 in technology and software. Should they make it to the final 5, the school will receive a $110,000.00 technology package.
The next phase of the competition involves online voting for the top 15 video submissions. The WVDE doesn’t normally promote voting competitions using our state email lists. However, this competition is clearly for the benefit of Madison Middle School and no individual is profiting from the competition. So I would like to ask all interested educators to support this school’s entry and vote for Madison Middle School using the link below.
www.samsung.com/solvefortomorrow Way to go Madison Middle School!

Attached are two pictures depicting just some of the digital learning taking place at Martinsburg High School.
The first is Mrs. Sarah Morin illustrating math problems to her class using a Mimio, and the second is Mrs. Elaine Unnone using iPads for her art lesson.

Digital Learning in Kindergarten
Opequon Elementary School
Berkeley County, WV

One student asks Siri (on iPad) what the temperature is while another student uses the interactive thermometer to adjust the temperature on the SmartBoard:

This is a Prezi made by ESL students to help other non-English speaking students learn more about Martinsburg High School.

by Rosemary Lynch

Art History: Italian Renaissance
We focused on three artists Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Class Discussion on recognisable trait in each artist works. Students move into groups of two or three. When an artwork is projected students hold up corresponding flash cards to show the artist they believe created the art.

--
Mary Watts
Art Teacher
Preston County

I have attached a few pictures of Digital learning Day in Marion County.

Rivesville-the music teacher is using technology to teach his class. The teacher is Mr. DeVito.

EFJS cell phones- the students are using their cell phones to come up with answers.

North-students are using ipads to collaborate on a project.

Students in Mrs. Sergeant's kindergarten at Roosevelt Elementary, Mason Co. work at computer stations. Every classroom is equipped with a new computer station for the 2012-13 school year. In addition, check out our cool school website at www.edline.net/pages/roosevelt

RobinCarter, principal
Roosevelt Elementary
Mason Co.

Here are some 5th grade students from Roosevelt Elementary, Mason Co. Utilizing laptops, jump drives and West Virginia Writes program!
Sent from my iPad

Students will be completing a series of virtual lab activities related to the identification of acids, bases,

and neutrals in preparation for their actual hands-on classroom activity.

Dixie Redmond

Science Teacher

East Fairmont Jr. High School

Marion County

Vladia Kadima is pictured sharing information from the

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Kids website with Mrs. Luciano's 4th grade class at Tomahawk Intermediate school. This site is an excellent interactive resource for music class. It includes Music Theory, Instruments of the Orchestra, and a radio player of excerpts from symphonic works.

Best regards,

Betty Jo Rockwell

Music Teacher

Tomahawk Intermediate School, Berkeley County WV

John Spataro, principal

Beth McCoy assistant principal

My English 9 Honors students read the novel Animal Farm. We discussed the types of propaganda used in this book in connection with the Russian Revolution. We first viewed examples of propaganda in relation to this book and the time period with the following links:

Next, students researched different propaganda techniques in our school's computer lab. They listed summaries of these techniques on the following worksheet:

Finally, students viewed various commercials and categorized them according to propaganda type on the same worksheet. We viewed these commercials on the overhead. Here is the link:

Once students saw how propaganda was used in history and real-world advertisements, they began creating an advertisement of their own. Each group chose a product randomly from a stack of printed pictures, and they developed either a print ad or a commercial to present to their class. They were required to use one propaganda technique that they learned as well as choose a target audience for their ad.

This lesson was both enjoyable and informative, revealing the necessity for digital/media awareness.

CSOs covered:

ELA.9.SL.C14.2 make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance

understanding of findings, reasoning and evidence and to add interest.

ELA.9.SL.C14.3 adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.

Thank you,

Rachel Skubis

RCB English 9 Teacher

I tweeted most of this out today, but I thought WVDE might want to know a little more about how Enslow Middle School is embracing the digital age through a 1:1 initiative using IOS devices.

We have rolled out approximately 200 devices to students and faculty since October of 2012. The student level of engagement has dramatically increased especially during activities that require research, collaboration, and investigation when every student that returned an IOS Device Acceptable Use Policy received a device. Teachers embraced the freedom of having a digital tool in the hands of students and the use of Edmodo allows for conservation of paper when assignments are submitted. QR Codes, video projects, wireless microscopes, cloud productivity tools, Overdrive Library, presentations, and a host of other Apps requested by staff and students to augment learning opportunities are installed on the iPads. We also created some class sets of devices to service students that could not participate in the 1:1 program. Pictures are attached of some activities from February 6, 2013.